STEAM-SHIPS

Top 10 Back-to-School Scholarships For Minorities:

The Coca-Cola Scholars Program is a very competitive program for high school seniors throughout the United States. Sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company, the largest soft drink company in the world, the program awards millions every year in college funding. The deadline is in October.

The Xerox Technical Minority Scholarship Program is designed to help cultivate minority students for potential recruitment in the field of technology. The scholarship amount award depends on the student’s tuition balance, academic excellence and classification. The deadline is in September.

The “From Failure to Promise” Essay Scholarship Contest offers an opportunity for high school seniors, undergraduate, and graduate students to earn scholarship money by writing a 1,000 word essay. Students will be asked to describe the challenges they have faced in achieving academic success.

The Gates Millennium Scholars Program(also known as the Bill Gates Scholarship) awards scholarships each year to African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian Pacific Islander American or Hispanic American students who plan to enroll full-time in a two-year or four-year college or university program. The deadline is in January.

The CIA Minority Undergraduate Scholarship Program was developed, in part, to assist minority and disabled students, but the opportunity is available to all students who meet the requirements. Sponsored by the U.S. government’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the program consists of an actual scholarship award and a full-time paid summer job in Washington, DC.

LAGRANT Foundation Scholarships are targeted toward minority undergraduate and graduate students, offering scholarships for students interested in careers in advertising, marketing, public relations, anthropology, or art. Students must be American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black (non-Hispanic) or Hispanic.

The Go Red Multicultural Scholarship Program champions greater inclusion of multicultural women in the nursing and medical industries, address important gaps in treatment, and ensure that all Americans have an opportunity to work with their healthcare providers to make the best choices that lead to good health.

The First Freedom Student Competition is a national essay and video contest open to high school students in the U.S. and U.S. territories. Students in grades 9-12 may participate. Two awards will be given, one essay award and one video award.

The Wendy’s High School Heisman Award Program recognizes male and female high school seniors who excel not only in sports but also academics and leadership capabilities. Every student who applies has a chance to win at the school, state and national level.

Science & Technology Corner

When she was a teenager, Kristina Dronenburg’s family played a unique game around the dinner table with her family.

Kristina Dronenburg, 23, Physicist, Naval Air Station, Patuxent River

“The game was called ‘Wouldn’t It Be Cool If,’” she says. “The rule was there was no bad idea and nothing was shot down. One day, I said, ‘wouldn’t it be cool if you could collect sound from a microphone and store it in a battery?’”

It was that moment in time that set Dronenburg on an unforgettable course, from high school valedictorian, to Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) scholar, to a Navy scientist who may just change the world.

Dronenburg recently tested her idea to transfer sound into energy during Naval Air Station, Patuxent River’s Innovation Challenge and currently has a patent pending. Her journey to DoD, and the realization of a lifelong dream, would not have been possible without the SMART program. SMART is a scholarship-for-service program that funds all education expenses for DoD’s next generation of scientists and engineers. SMART scholars immediately enter the DoD workforce upon graduation. For Dronenburg, SMART created opportunities she never imagined.

“SMART gave me the path to make my dreams a reality,” she says. “SMART gave me the ability not to worry about school loans. All I had to do was learn. It gave me a chance to start my career at a very young age and provided me a direct path into the Navy. It brought me from not knowing where I was going, to giving me a clear path to not only help the military, but to also develop technology for the Navy.
“SMART launched my career, and it was truly a blessing,” she said.